Canon May Be Incorporating Fingerprint ID Technology Into Their Cameras

Are you a fan of fingerprint technology on your smartphone? If so, and you are a photographer, something similar may soon appear on your camera and lenses. Canon has registered a patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a fingerprint ID system that would help identify photographers using a specific lens or camera body.

More than an anti-theft measure, the fingerprint will not only identify the user—allowing security lockout—but will allow for custom settings. This means that features like autofocus, image stabilization, and white balance could be preset according to a fingerprint. It's an interesting feature that would allow multiple users of the same camera or lens to load custom settings for each individual photographer.

Of course, just because there is a patent, doesn't mean that your Canon gear will show up with a fingerprint ID system just yet. In 2017 alone, Canon was granted over 3,000 patents, putting it number three in terms of top US patent assignees, beating out companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. But, not all of these patents are for features that immediately come to market. If anything, the patents tell us what type of technology Canon's engineers think might be useful in the future and what trends they could see appearing in photography equipment.